The Conspirator Emerges

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I want to invite you to take out your Bibles and turn with me to Genesis chapter 3.
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And our focus today is going to be only on verse 1, but when it's time to read we're going to read verses 1 to 7 to establish the context.
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But before we read I'd like to make a few short comments.
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Title of today's message is The Conspirator Emerges.
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And as I was writing this sermon, the title actually came quickly because the world is filled with conspiracy theories.
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And one of the most popular genres of literature is conspiracy fiction.
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Usually in a conspiracy novel the protagonist is some sort of journalist or investigator.
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He goes through a series of pulling at threads until he unravels a mystery that goes all the way to the top.
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But we also know that mysteries, or rather conspiracies, are not relegated only to the fiction section.
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There are many alleged conspiracies in our world right now.
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We are used to seeing words like scandal and cover up, propaganda.
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We're used to seeing those words in the news and this is especially true right now in the midst of a global pandemic.
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Cities being burned by riotous mobs and many of the world's elite are currently under the microscope because of accusations of human trafficking.
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Very serious issue.
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You can't open your newsfeed anymore without seeing some accusation of vast global conspiracy.
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And many of you have talked to me and you've asked me the question, Pastor, do you believe in conspiracy theories? And my answer is simple.
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One, I say we shouldn't believe every theory because that would be given to naivete and to gullibility and that would be dangerous.
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But at the same time, we would be foolish to not think that there are larger powers at work behind the evil that's in the world.
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I do believe there is a grand conspirator.
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I believe there is a conspirator.
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I don't believe it's the Illuminati.
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I don't believe it's the NWO.
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And no, not the wrestling one, the New World Order, if you don't know what that means.
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And I'm not even certain it's George Soros.
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In fact, I'm pretty sure it's not him.
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All those groups may be evil, all those groups may exist, but the grand conspirator of this world is Satan himself.
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And the Bible makes it clear that the devil does exist and that he is our greatest enemy.
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Ephesians 6 reminds us that the battles that we fight are not against flesh and blood, but against spiritual powers in heavenly places.
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Therefore, I cannot deny the existence of genuine conspiracy in this world because a grand conspirator does exist.
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And today we are going to see the introduction of the conspirator.
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So far in the narrative, there have only been three intellectual creatures mentioned.
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Well, let me back that up.
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Not three intellectual creatures.
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There have been three intellectual personalities because God is not a creature.
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But God has been introduced and God has been introduced as an intellectual person.
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He has the ability to speak.
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He has the ability to think.
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He has the ability to produce.
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He is an intellectual.
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He is intelligent.
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And then we see two other intelligences that are introduced that God creates.
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God creates Adam as an intelligent man.
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And then He creates Eve as an intelligent woman.
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And so, so far we've only seen three what we would call intelligences.
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I understand animals have a certain form of intelligence, but I'm talking about the ability to interact with one another, the ability to think on a higher level.
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That's only been three so far that we've seen.
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But today, we are introduced to a fourth.
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And this is the first one who comes into the narrative with an obviously nefarious intention.
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The only one so far whose interest is to tear down what has been created.
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God created it.
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Adam and Eve were to enjoy it and to take dominion over it and exercise God's authority in it.
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And now comes Satan whose only intention is to conspire against the Almighty and to rob the garden of its perfection and to do nothing more than taint the beauty and the goodness of God's creation.
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And what I want us to hopefully note today, and if this is the only application you get, I hope that you get at least this.
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Satan is still alive.
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And he is still active.
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And he is still a part of this world.
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You see, I think oftentimes, and especially within the church, I think oftentimes we relegate Satan to the pages of Scripture only and we forget that he is still a roaring lion seeking to be made a vower.
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So today, we're going to talk about the Grand Conspirator and we're going to see him emerge on the pages of Scripture.
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Let's stand and give honor and reverence to God's Word.
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And we're going to read down to verse 7, though we will not be exegeting at all.
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I want to get the context.
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Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made.
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He said to the woman, Did God actually say, You shall not eat of any tree in the garden? And the woman said to the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees in the garden, but God said, You shall not eat of the fruit of the tree that is in the midst of the garden, neither shall you touch it lest you die.
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But the serpent said to the woman, You shall not surely die.
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For God knows that when you eat of it, your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.
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So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food and that it was a delight to the eyes and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate.
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Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked, and they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves loincloths.
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Let us pray.
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Father in heaven, as I seek to give an exposition of this verse, I pray that you would keep me from error and from cowardice.
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I pray that your word would be proclaimed, and I know, Lord, that it will not return void.
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More than anything, Lord, I pray that your people will be instructed, edified, called to repentance where necessary, corrected where it is needed.
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And Lord, if there are those here who do not know Christ, which there certainly must be, in a room full of people this size, Lord, there are certainly those, both young and old, who have not yet bowed the knee to Jesus Christ, I pray that today they will see that there is only one who deserves to be served, and it is not the devil, but it is Jesus himself.
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And it's in his name we pray.
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Amen.
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One of the signs of the depravity of our age is that Satan has become a hero.
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There are several movements that are devoted to venerating the devil, venerating Satan.
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Did you know there's a church of Satan? It was begun in 1966, based on the teachings of Anton LaVey.
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But more recently, a more modernistic version has arisen.
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It's called the Satanic Temple.
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It was started in 2013.
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And two years later, in 2015, they unveiled an eight and a half foot tall statue of Baphomet.
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And if you don't know what Baphomet is, you've probably seen the figure, even if you've never heard the name.
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Baphomet is a figure of the devil with a goat's head and legs, the torso of a man, the wings of an angel, above his head, in the halo form, is the halo of the pentagram.
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And at his feet, this eight and a half foot tall statue, three thousand pound statue, at his feet are carved two children.
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One boy and one girl, looking up at the statue of Baphomet in awe and wonder.
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The statue was unveiled in Detroit, Michigan and donated by the Temple of Satan to be placed alongside the Ten Commandments.
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And here's the interesting part.
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The devotees of the Satanic Temple actually don't believe the devil is real.
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What they believe is in the idea that the devil supposedly represents.
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In fact, I'll quote Time Magazine.
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It said, The group does not promote a belief in a personal Satan.
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By their logic, Satan is an abstraction, a literary figure, not a deity.
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He stands for rationality, for skepticism, for speaking truth to power, even at great personal cost.
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See, they make him a hero.
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He's a hero of the class of the protester.
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He's willing to stand up to power.
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He's willing to speak the truth, even at great personal cost.
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The devil is a hero.
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He spits in the face of the Almighty.
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He stands against authority.
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He encourages the devaluation of the Word of God and he represents the idea that not only should God be ignored, but he can be ignored.
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Satan's no longer a villain to be vanquished.
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Satan is now a hero to be admired.
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There's even a television show, Lucifer.
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And in Lucifer, the devil is the hero.
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He is the protagonist.
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And you might say, Oh, well, such a show wouldn't be widely popular.
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Five seasons so far.
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Five seasons has it continued to be on the air.
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You see, we've come to the point where we've made heroes out of villains.
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We celebrate the anti-hero.
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In the last 20 years, two of the most popular television characters have been one who was a horrifically terrible mob boss who used foul language, killed people all the time.
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And the other one was a chemistry teacher turned meth creator.
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And he was the hero of a show that is considered to be one of the most groundbreaking and popular shows of the last 20 years.
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He sold meth, killed people.
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But he was the hero.
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And some of you are getting mad at me because I like that show.
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Well, what are we doing? We don't have heroes anymore.
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We take villains, we make them heroes.
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We celebrate the anti-hero.
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That's...
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Go back 50 years.
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Go back 70 years.
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And think of who was glorified.
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The good guy.
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Now we glorify the bad guy who gets away with it.
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We celebrate the bad boy.
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And we root for his success.
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And we wonder what's wrong with us.
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And what greater villain is there to hope for his success than the devil himself? What greater villain in all of history than the devil? And for most people, that's absolutely fine to venerate the devil because he doesn't exist.
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He's a character of mythology.
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He's a figure of folklore.
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He's a figment of overactive religious imaginations.
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Therefore, he's not to be taken seriously.
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He's nothing more than the punchline to a bad joke.
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So it's okay to venerate him because he's not real.
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We celebrate the devil like we celebrate the mischievous Tom Sawyer or his friend Huck Finn.
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The problem is that the devil does not allow such an attitude for Christians because the Bible is clear about the existence of the devil.
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Yet, at the same time, most people in America, and I base this not on my own opinion, I base this on a scientifically conducted survey by the Barna Research Group.
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This group is known.
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Mike and I talked about Barna this week and their work and what they do in doing case studies and surveys and large swaths of people who identify themselves as Christians.
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And guess what they found out? In 2019, so this survey is less than a year old, the majority of professing Christians do not believe in a personal devil.
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Only 26% of those surveyed said they actually firmly and strongly believe in a personal devil.
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40% of them said they absolutely don't believe it.
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20% said they probably don't.
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But only 26%, right around 1 in 4 people, that means 3 out of 4 don't, believe in a personal devil.
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They said instead they see the devil as a symbol of evil.
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What's the old saying? The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he doesn't exist.
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Well, we're there.
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And this should come as no surprise because Christianity in America has become ever more secularized.
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Do you realize that most people live a secular life with Christianity hung on as an ornament? They don't live a spiritual life engaging a secular culture.
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They live a secular life and they go to church on Sunday.
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You see the problem is many Christians are no longer supernaturalists.
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Now you might have heard me use that word before and if you don't remember that word, remember what it means.
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Christians are supernaturalists.
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What that means is we believe in the natural.
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We believe in things you can taste, touch, see, smell and hear.
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We believe in the things that can be observed and measured by the senses.
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But we also believe that there are things that cannot be observed by the natural eye, cannot be heard by the natural ear, cannot be touched by the hand or smelled or tasted.
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There are things outside of the realm of our perception.
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And we call those things the supernatural things.
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What's so funny about this is as long as Christians are becoming less supernatural and science is becoming more supernatural.
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Because all the time science is talking about other dimensions.
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All the time science is talking about a multiverse.
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And the greatest scientific minds of our age are searching out these things while Christians are becoming so naturalistic that we don't even believe in the devil anymore.
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We don't believe what's so obviously given to us in Scripture.
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But if Stephen Hawking came out and said well, he's dead now.
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If some other smart person that I can't think of came out and said there's a multiverse and there's different versions of you that live on a different earth and all of these multiverses coincide at the same time and they split off into different paradigms and time periods.
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You'd say, wow, how scientific.
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If they talked about other dimensions.
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People get all excited about peer-reviewed journals that are written articles about other dimensions and they get so excited that somebody talks about the devil and they say, oh, you're foolish.
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Talk about angelic realm.
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Oh, how silly, pastor.
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How could you believe in the devil? How could you believe in spiritual things? How could you believe in cosmic powers that are beyond our perception? How foolish.
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See what we've done? We've become functional naturalists.
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We no longer believe in the biblical account of the supernatural.
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We no longer believe there's an unseen realm.
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And that is the greatest trick the devil has pulled.
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Because as long as we don't think that he's there we won't care how he might be influencing the world, how he might be influencing us.
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See, the Bible says that the devil does exist and it is absolutely clear that we not only need to be aware of this but that we need to be on our guard regarding this.
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Remember that little passage in Ephesians 6 about the armor of God? What's the purpose of the armor of God? That you might stand against the wiles of Jiminy Cricket? No, because he ain't real.
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That you might stand against the wiles of the devil.
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That's the whole purpose of the armor of God, right? Because you have an enemy, a real enemy, an enemy who actually cares enough to want to hurt you and you don't even care enough to believe he's there.
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Seven Old Testament books and every New Testament writer referred to the devil.
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Jesus himself referred to Satan multiple occasions, more than I can even put in my notes.
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And Jesus interacts with the devil after his baptism.
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Remember when Jesus is baptized? Comes up out of the water.
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The Father, this is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.
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The Spirit of God descends upon Him as a dove and then Jesus goes into ministry.
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No, He doesn't.
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He goes into seclusion.
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And when He goes into seclusion, He does this in preparation for ministry.
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It's His time of testing.
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He goes out into the wilderness to demonstrate His righteousness.
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He puts Himself in the worst of conditions.
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He puts Himself in the condition of being one who has everything of need and nothing of gain.
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He is hungry.
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He is thirsty.
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He is tired.
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He is weak.
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And then the devil comes.
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And there's an interaction between the Lord of glory and the Lord of darkness.
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And people say, I don't believe in the devil.
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Is Jesus a liar? Is this account from Scripture a myth? Did the devil not say to Jesus, take this stone and turn it into bread? Did that not happen? Did our Lord not demonstrate His own righteousness by overcoming the temptations of the devil three times in a row using the Word of God as His sword in that battle? Did that happen or did it not? Did Satan not enter Judas? The Scripture says Satan entered Judas right as he was to go and give over the Lord of glory to those who had paid him to betray Him.
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To deny Satan's existence is to deny scriptural infallibility.
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So we come to a crossroads.
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Is the Bible true or is it not? And somebody says, well, I believe in Satan.
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I just believe he's a symbol of evil.
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Understand this.
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Symbols do not carry the traits of personality.
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See, the devil is said to have intelligence, emotion, and volition.
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By the way, if you want to know what those three represent, intelligence, emotion, and volition are the three character traits of personality.
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Intelligence, the ability to know things.
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Emotion, the ability to feel things.
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And volition, the ability to choose things, to will.
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So, does the devil have intelligence? 2 Corinthians 11.3 says he is cunning.
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Does he have emotion? Revelation 12.17 says he became furious.
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Volition, does he have a will? 2 Timothy 2.26 says that people can be captured to do the will of the devil.
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So, we see intellect, emotion, and will.
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That's not ascribed to a symbol.
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That's ascribed to a person.
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That's ascribed to a being.
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The Bible does not allow us to write the devil off as merely a symbol of evil.
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So, with all of that as a lengthy introduction, I now want us to turn our attention to the third chapter of Genesis.
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Because this is where we're confronted the first time with the devil.
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And I realize, because some of you may feel the need to point this out to me later, I want to go ahead and preempt your objection.
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I realize that in Genesis chapter 3, he is not called the devil.
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That's a fairly common objection.
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Well, how do we know this is the devil? His name is not used.
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He's not called Satan.
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He's not called the devil.
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It says here rather that it is a serpent, which is among the beasts that God had made.
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But we quickly realize this is no ordinary serpent.
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Because this serpent, and by the way, a serpent is a snake.
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And as many of you know, I am not a friend of snakes.
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They are among the worst of the thing.
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They are the devil, and I'm going to prove it.
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At least this one was the devil.
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But again, this was no ordinary snake.
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How do we know? Because most snakes don't have an agenda.
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I'm going to say that again.
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Most snakes do not have an agenda.
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Most snakes do not have a voice.
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In fact, I don't know of any other snake in all of human history that had a voice.
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But this snake had an ability to talk.
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And later in the Bible, and if you're taking notes, you may want to write these two verses down, in Revelation chapter 12 and verse 9, and in Revelation chapter 20 verse 2, a reference is made to the serpent of old.
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And it says that the serpent of old is the devil and Satan.
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In fact, I'll read it to you.
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Revelation 12, 9, speaking of the dragon, it says, the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world, he was thrown down to the earth, and its angels were thrown down with him.
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And then in Revelation 20 verse 2 it says, and he seized the dragon, that ancient serpent, who is the devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years.
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That phrase, that ancient serpent, literally means that serpent of old.
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It's literally talking about, one way to translate it would be, that primeval serpent.
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That would be another way to translate the phrase, that ancient serpent.
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Because what it's referring to is the same Satan that is mentioned by name in Revelation, is the same Satan who was in the garden with Adam and Eve.
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The same serpent who is the dragon in Revelation, is the snake in Genesis.
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The Bible wants us to be clear.
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In fact, it names him not only the serpent, it names him the devil, which means slanderer, and it names him Satan, which means adversary.
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Both of those things certainly qualify as descriptions of the devil in the garden.
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Think about what the devil in the garden is.
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He is a slanderer, he slanders God.
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What does the devil say about God? We're going to talk about this more in the weeks to come.
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You shall not surely die.
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You know what that's saying? God is a liar.
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God said you shall surely die, you shall not surely die.
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Your God is a liar.
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That's slander.
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And he is a deceiver.
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Hath God truly said? That's what we're going to talk about probably next week, because that's the next thing we see.
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Once the devil is introduced, the very first thing that comes out of his mouth is, Hath God said? And I want to tell you, from the beginning of creation to now, that has been the same lie that the devil has used.
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Because every time someone reads the Word of God, what comes into your heart, is this really from God? Is this really what God has said? Is this the truth? The devil's desire is to slander God and to deceive people not to believe His Word.
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And some people take issue with this.
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They read it and they say, well, this is obviously mythology.
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I mean, serpents can't talk, therefore this is mythology.
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This isn't true.
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But here's the thing about that.
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I want to respond to that objection.
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Because the Bible doesn't say serpents can talk.
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It says this serpent talked.
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It's not as if it says serpents talking is a normal thing.
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It's not as if it says all serpents talk, and we know serpents don't talk, therefore the Bible is wrong.
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It says this particular serpent spoke, and we know by nature of looking at later Scripture that this particular serpent was no ordinary serpent, but this was Satan himself having taken the form of one of God's creatures.
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And why did he take the form of the serpent, beloved? He took the form of the serpent because this was the creature that was most crafty.
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This was the creature that was most sneaky.
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That's what the word crafty means, or cunning.
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He's shrewd.
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So the devil looks at all of the creatures.
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He could have come as a sheep.
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But you see, the sheep are followers.
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He could have come as a lion.
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But lions are very hard to miss.
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But snakes sneak up on you.
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I mean, sister, we know.
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Your father is in the hospital right now.
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We're praying for him because of a snake in his garage.
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I'm sure that wasn't an invited guest.
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And I remember years ago in my yard, we had a piece of metal that had fallen and had laid there so long the grass turned yellow.
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You ever had that happen? I mean, am I the only one? Something fall in your yard, you just don't move it, and season comes, season goes, the grass turns green.
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Or everything else is green, but the grass is dead under it because you're just too lazy to move it.
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Am I being too honest? I'll move on.
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And I walk over to that piece of metal because Cody and I were going to take it out to the road.
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And we flip that piece of metal over and about a six-foot garter snake.
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Now, a garter snake won't hurt you, but he'll kill me because I'll run for my life and fall and die.
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But I flip it over and a six-foot garter snake just bolted out from underneath that thing.
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He'd been hiding there.
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Snakes are really good at hiding.
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They're really good at being crafty.
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They're shrewd.
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They sneak up on their prey and they sneak around us.
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Sometimes you're in your backyard, there are snakes there, you don't even know.
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So the devil chooses among God's creatures.
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He could have come in any form he wanted to, but he chooses the one.
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And the text tells us why.
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Because this animal was the craftiest, this was the shrewdest, this was the sneakiest of all God's creatures.
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And so that's the form the devil chooses.
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He adopted the surreptitious snake.
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But this leads us to another question.
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We know the devil is here.
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He's mentioned in chapter 3, the serpent was more crafty.
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He's mentioned, but it doesn't tell us where he came from.
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He just pops up on the scene.
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Nothing in Genesis 2, nothing in Genesis 1 has mentioned the creation of a devil.
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Nothing in Genesis 1 and 2 have even mentioned the creation of angels.
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Right? The closest thing that we have is Genesis 2, 1 talks about the hosts of heaven.
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And I mentioned it when I preached on it a few months ago that that could be a tacit reference to God's creation of the angels.
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But that's the closest thing that we have.
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The Bible does not talk about God constructing the heavenly realm.
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He does not talk about the way that the angels were made, when they were made.
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The only thing that we do have are some later passages in the Psalms and in Job that talk about the fact that angels were there at creation because they sang the praises of God.
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So we know they were there.
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But we don't know when they were created.
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And we don't know about the creation of Satan.
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But we do, we believe some things.
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And now I want to be careful and I've been praying about this all week, thinking about it.
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Because what I want to share with you about this portion of the sermon is part and parcel based on a traditional understanding of the text.
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But I think it bears weight.
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So what I'm about to share with you, you might want to argue or say, well I don't know if I understand it that way.
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But the traditional understanding is that Satan was first created as part of the angelic realm and then he fell.
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I think that that fits a couple of things.
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One, fits with the character of God.
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I don't believe God created an evil being.
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That's part of this.
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But also it fits with the characteristics of Satan himself as being an angel because there are many passages that would describe him as having angelic qualities.
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Okay? And the reason why I'm bringing this up is because Satan is never described as having God-like qualities.
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He does not have the quality of being eternal.
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He does not have the quality of being omniscient.
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He does not have the quality of being omnipresent.
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He does not have the qualities of God.
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Satan is a creature, not creator.
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But he is described as having the qualities of an angel and I do want to ask you to turn in your Bible.
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Go to Ephesians 6.
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I mentioned it a few times but I think it's good that we look at it.
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In Ephesians 6, verse 11, it says, Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil.
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For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.
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Now, just for a moment, I want us to consider what the sphere it's talking about.
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Because Satan is called the prince of the power of the air.
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Ephesians 2.2.
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So that means he has a certain power and a certain influence and a certain authority over a certain realm and the realm is described here as the heavenly places.
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So what are the heavenly places? The Bible describes heaven in multiple different ways.
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We talk about the atmosphere around us.
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That's often called heaven because the birds fly in the heavens.
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The clouds above us is often called heaven because that's where the rain falls from the heavens.
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And then we talk about the abode of God.
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That's what we call the heaven of heavens or the throne room of God.
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And so the authority that Paul is talking about here is he's saying that Satan is part of the unseen realm.
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You know, there was a time in the Old Testament where the veil was lifted and there was an opportunity to see the unseen realm.
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Remember that story? And there was an opportunity to see the vision of what was really happening behind the scenes? Beloved, that's the heavenly places that's being referred to here.
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That's this realm that we cannot see.
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And there are good angels and there are evil angels.
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But I do not believe God created the angels evil.
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I believe that God created the angels all good and that some of the angels fell.
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And I base this upon the character of God.
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I base this upon the nature of God's creation.
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When he created, he said he created everything good.
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And I believe that Satan fell and I believe he took the angels with him in his fall.
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And that is why the Scripture talks about the devil and his angels.
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Did you know the Bible says that? Matthew chapter 25, 41 says that hell was created for the devil and his angels.
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Why are they called his angels? Why does it have the possessive? Because they are his.
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He took them with him.
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Now, there's a passage in Revelation chapter 12 that says that when the dragon was cast down, he whipped his tail and took a third of the stars from the heavens with him.
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And Revelation, because it is written in figurative language, we can ask the question, is this a picture of how many angels went with Satan? Was it a third of God's heavenly host that was taken? I think that that is certainly a reasonable way to understand the text.
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But here's what we do know.
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Revelation 12, 9 says that the angels fell with him.
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So what does that tell us? I'm building us up to a conclusion, basing this on evidence.
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But the conclusion is Satan fell.
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Why? Because they fell with him.
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If they fell with him, that means he had to fall.
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If they went with him, that means he had to fall.
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But then the question comes up, when did he fall? Because the Bible doesn't tell us.
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And it doesn't give us a clear, shot for shot outline of how it happened.
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In fact, you remember a few weeks ago I talked about Paradise Lost? One of the longest epic poems in English literature.
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And Paradise Lost is the writer's attempt to write about how Satan fell.
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And it's a long epic poem about how Satan was before the throne of God and he rebelled against God and he snuck into the garden and took the position of the serpent.
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It's very interesting to read through Paradise Lost and see how one man interprets it.
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But again, it's just an interpretation because we don't have a clear text telling us this is exactly what happened.
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In fact, what we do have, the only thing we really have, is we have two texts that have been traditionally interpreted as being about the devil.
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And I want to read them to you, but I want to read them with this caveat.
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It doesn't say it's about the devil.
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It says it's about the king of Tyre and the king of Babylon.
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But for a long time, these texts have been traditionally applied to the devil because of what they contain.
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They contain references to Eden.
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They contain references to Cherubim.
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They contain references to the presence of God.
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And all of those things would certainly qualify for the devil himself.
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And so many people see this as a description of the devil behind the king of Tyre and the description of the devil behind the king of Babylon.
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So you want to read those texts with me? We'll do it.
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It won't take us long.
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Turn over to Ezekiel 28.
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This is the reference to the king of Tyre.
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In Ezekiel 28, verse 11, it says, Moreover, the word of the Lord came to me, son of man, raise a lamentation over the king of Tyre and say to him, Thus says the Lord God, You were the picture of perfection.
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ESV says signet, but it says, You were the signet of perfection, full of wisdom and beauty.
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You were in Eden, the garden of God.
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See, this is one of the reasons why people think this is referring more to the devil than to the king of Tyre because it points to Eden.
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We know Satan was there.
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Every precious stone was your covering, sardius, topaz, diamond, beryl, onyx, jasper, sapphire, emerald, carbuncle, and crafted in gold were your settings and your engravings.
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On the day you were created, they were prepared.
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You were an anointed guardian cherub.
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Cherub is a type of angel.
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I placed you.
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You were on the holy mountain of God.
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In the midst of the stones of fire, you walked.
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That's a picture we know of angels being in the presence of God, walking in His presence.
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And it goes on to say, You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created till unrighteousness was found within you.
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That's the statement of the fall.
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In the abundance of your trade, you were filled with violence and in your midst, and you sinned.
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So I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and I destroyed you, O guardian cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.
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Your heart was proud because of your beauty.
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You corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor, and I cast you to the ground.
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I exposed you before kings to feast their eyes on you.
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By the multitude of your iniquities and the unrighteousness of your trade, you profaned your sanctuaries.
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So I brought fire out from your midst, and it consumed you, and I turned you to ashes on the earth and in the sight of all who saw you.
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All who know you among the peoples are appalled at you.
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You have come to a dreadful end and shall be no more forever." Of course, this is a picture of the...
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If we refer to this as Satan, this would be a picture of his coming end.
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So I know what some of you are thinking.
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It doesn't say it's the devil, and I know that.
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And I'm willing to say that this is based on a traditional reading of the text, and I believe some internal evidence points to this truth.
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But let's go over and look at Isaiah 14, and with the same attitude, compare it as well.
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This referring to the king of Babylon.
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See, some people come out and say, this absolutely refers to the devil.
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I'm at least giving you the option of saying I'm not certain, but I think it does.
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And I think that it's...
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I'm willing to say that it's based upon tradition and some things within the text I believe it certainly could be.
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And the other thing I'm willing to say is this.
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If this ain't talking about the devil, it would be hard to apply this to a mere man.
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Now, Isaiah 14, verse 12.
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This is real big, because in the King James, this is where you get the word Lucifer.
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In the King James Bible, it says, How you have fallen, O Lucifer, son of the morning.
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And that name Lucifer has always traditionally been applied to the devil, at least since the time of the King James Bible.
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But in the ESV it says Daystar, so we'll read it there.
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It says, How you have fallen from heaven, O Daystar, son of the dawn.
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How you were cut down to the ground, you who laid the nations low.
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You said in your heart, I will ascend to heaven above the stars of God.
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I will set my throne on high.
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I will sit in the mountain of assembly in the far reaches of the north.
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I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.
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I will make myself like the Most High.
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But you are brought down to Sheol, to the far reaches of the pit.
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There is what we call the five I wills.
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I will ascend to heaven.
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I will set my throne on high.
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I will sit in the mountain of the assembly.
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I will ascend above the heights of the clouds.
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And I will make myself like the Most High.
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Often time that's traditionally been interpreted as the five I wills of Satan.
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I will do these things.
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Most importantly, I will be the Most High.
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I will take the position of God Almighty.
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I will be worshipped.
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I will ascend to the throne.
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Now with those two texts in mind, I want you to go one other place.
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I know we're doing Bible bingo today.
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We're going all around.
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But one more text I want to show you.
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Go over with me to 1 Timothy 3.
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In 1 Timothy chapter 3, we have the requirements for the office of elder and deacon.
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And in the midst of the requirements for the office of elder, it tells us something about the elder's requirements.
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And it uses the devil as the example.
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Listen to verse 6.
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1 Timothy chapter 3, verse 6.
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He, that is the candidate for eldership, must not be a recent convert, or he may become puffed up with conceit, and fall into the condemnation of the devil.
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So Paul is writing about the elders of the church.
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And he says an elder should not be one who has recently been converted to Christ.
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Because a recent convert, though he may be physically mature, he may be an older man, he may not be spiritually mature.
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And when you put a spiritually immature man in the position of elder, you run the risk of that man becoming conceited with his immediate and newfound authority.
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And because of that danger of putting a man in the position of authority, we ought not do that because he might fall into the same condemnation that the devil fell into.
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See, that tells us something.
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It tells us the devil fell into condemnation.
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Remember I've been trying to make this point the whole time? The devil was good, but he fell.
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This is the example.
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In the same way that a new believer becoming an elder might quickly become conceited and fall into condemnation, the devil was good, and he was conceited, and he, because of that conceit, fell into condemnation.
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The Bible over and over and over tells us that there's something that comes before the fall.
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What is it? Pride.
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And I hope over the next few weeks you'll understand what I'm about to say because I don't have time to really flesh this out today.
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But I'm really going to flesh this out in the next couple of weeks.
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The foundation of all sin is pride.
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And I believe that it makes sense that that would be the foundation for the devil's fall.
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Every sin that we do is an act of taking God off of His throne and putting ourselves in His place and saying, at this moment, I know better than you.
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Every sin is founded on the sin of pride.
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And that would make sense that that would be the impetus for the fall of He who was the tempter of all of mankind.
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And how did He tempt Eve? You will be like God.
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He knew that the very thing that tempted Him would ultimately tempt her.
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So where did Satan come from? It is my contention that he was part of God's good creation.
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He was a member of the angelic host.
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He rebelled against God.
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He fell from his position.
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And we don't know when that happened, but it happened before man fell, obviously, and probably after God created man.
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Because after God created man, He declared everything good.
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And we know Satan was not alone.
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Many angels fell with him and they became demons.
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And here's what's interesting about demons.
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Did you know demons don't have a Savior? The Bible refers to the angels that did not leave their heavenly abode as the elect angels.
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But they're not elect in the sense that they have a Savior like we have a Savior.
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They're elect in that they were chosen not to fall, but those who did fall are not given the opportunity for redemption.
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There's no angelic Jesus who goes and gets on an angelic cross and pays for the sin of the angels.
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But there is a human Jesus, the God-man who came into the world to die for men as a man, representing men to God.
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See, that's the thing.
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And I honestly think that that may be the reason why they hate us so much.
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They hated Jesus.
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Do you know there's more demonic activity in the four Gospels than there is in all of the rest of the Bible? Think of it like this.
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Read the Old Testament and tell me how many times you see demon possession, demon oppression.
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You rarely see it at all.
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Read Acts and the writings of Paul.
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You very rarely see it at all.
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Where do we see the height of demonic activity in the Bible? It is when Jesus is here.
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They hate Him because they hate what He's doing.
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They hate the Gospel.
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And they hate the elect.
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The Bible says Satan does what he does so that he can take away, if possible, even the elect of God.
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But you see, the beauty is he can't.
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Satan cannot steal us from the Father's hand.
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He can make life difficult.
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He can make life hard to live.
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He can make temptation after temptation after temptation.
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But Jesus Christ said this.
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He said, you are in My hand.
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I am in My Father's hand.
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And no one can take you out of My Father's hand.
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So what do we do about the devil? First, we don't deny that he exists.
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If we deny that he exists, we're denying Scripture.
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But we also don't give him too much power in our lives and give him too much credit in our lives because he is an already vanquished foe.
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We need to treat him as the enemy that he is.
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And the Bible says, first and foremost, submit yourself to God and resist the devil and he'll flee from you.
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James 4, verse 7.
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Submit yourself to God.
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That's first.
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Resist the devil.
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You know what the Bible says? Romans 16, 19.
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The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.
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The God of peace will soon crush Satan under your feet.
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He is a foe.
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He is an enemy.
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He is right now working in this world.
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And if you don't see Him at work, open your eyes because He's all around us.
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And He is doing things in this world that we can't even imagine.
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The Bible says our three great enemies are the flesh, the world, and the devil.
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The flesh is influenced by the world.
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The world is influenced by the devil.
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But the Bible says that we have the Holy Spirit inside of us.
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And if we walk by the Spirit, we will not gratify the desires of the flesh.
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The devil has one entrance road with us.
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That's the flesh.
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So walk by the Spirit.
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Trust in God.
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You know why Eve fell? You know why Adam fell? Because for a moment they didn't trust God.
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They trusted the liar rather than the Lord.
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They trusted the deceiver rather than Him who created all things.
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Who are you trusting today? Who has your faith and trust? May it be the Lord.
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And may all of our faith and hope be in Him.
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Let us pray.
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Father, I thank You that we have this opportunity to examine the great enemy of the faith.
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And Lord, now as we sing, I pray, Almighty God, that we would sing as unto You, that we would not sing to one another, that we would not sing to impress one another, but that we would sing as unto You, being reminded, O God, that You are the God who created all things, even the angels, and that the angels who fell may seek to oppress us, but they can never possess us if we are in Christ, for He is ours and we are His.
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We thank You for that in Jesus' name.
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Amen.